About Sooz, Part II

This is an updated “About Sooz” entry. I need to submit a bio for a panel I’m on next month. So, I thought I’d put up a new “About Sooz” page here at sooz.com that will help me figure out what to say in that bio. I’m not really fond of talking about myself; but I suppose it might help to give some context to who I am and what I am up to.

I got online August 1993. I’ve been hosting and organizing events in the Boston area since 1998 and I’ve been one of those “connector” types for about that long, too. I send out event invitations to my email list on a semi-regular basis. In 1997-1998 I was part of Swanky.org, one of the first web communities/collectives of web designers and writers. I got us a bunch of press and a feature on the “Wild, Wild Web” television show (that I’d later go on to work for in the marketing department). In 2000 I raised $90k to put together the Geek Pride Festival at the Boston Park Plaza Castle that was attended by about 3,000 people. This was a very big undertaking as I did pretty much all the work for the owner of the festival. The festival received a lot of press from The Boston Globe, ABC News, CIO Magazine, CNN, INC Magazine, MIT Technology Review and radio stations just to name a few. I host a sushi party once a year that started in 1998 when Derek Powazek and I invited a couple dozen friends to dinner during Web98.

I quit a corporate marketing job towards the end of 2001 and have been doing freelance work ever since. One of my clients is in real estate and I’m helping him with web marketing, events and weblog consulting. Pete Caputa and I are working together on a few of his event concepts. I also provide extensive feedback regarding WhizSpark’s event marketing tools/platform.

My own network of websites right now is focused on exploitboston.com (it’ll get a little makeover this summer), freeagentboston.com (a network of people working solo around Boston) and sooz.com (my personal website). I’m also talking to a leading web designer and a CSS guru about helping them plan a series of events.

In 2004 I helped set up BostonWAG, a wireless advocacy group in Boston. I’m helping plan a WiFi Summit in Boston that Councillor John Tobin Jr. has initiated. April 2005 I went to Los Angeles to participate on a panel about municipal/city WiFi at The Mobile Media conference hosted by the American Press Institute’s Media Center.